Helen Sinoradzki

“I bought my first collection from that little bookstore, on their recommendation, and fell in love with the writer M.F.K. Fisher, whose works on gastronomy couldn't have been more foreign to me, growing up, as I did, in a big family, where we boiled everything in vat...

Many years ago I wrote a long story using an old plot, a stranger comes to town—in this case, three strangers who arrive at different times in Blair, Nebraska. The story focused on three women: Louisa, Grace, and Irene. It also had a character named Walter, a pharmacis...

Several years ago I started writing a memoir about my time as a member of a Catholic lay institute run by a priest who abused the members. I didn't tell my sister about the memoir. After I left the institute, I told her about the abuse. She was worried about the effect...

Before I came to Portland, I wrote without contact with fellow writers. Some writers work that way their whole lives. It didn't work for me. After taking several classes at Attic Writers, I joined The Pinewood Table. I submitted one of the pieces I workshopped there to...

Yesterday Pope Francis met with six victims of sexual abuse by priests, saying a private mass for them and meeting with them individually. I was one of a group of women who were sexually abused by a priest in the 1960s and have written a memoir, Thursday's Child, about...

“Playing with point of view is the most instructive thing a writer can do.” Stevan Allred, co-teacher with Joanna Rose at The Pinewood Table in Portland, Oregon, and author of A Simplified Map of the Real World, a collection of linked short stories.

Common wisdom about...

Ten years ago, I made a list of my top five favorite books. They are all books I've read more than once, a luxury I don't allow myself very often, given that long list of books not yet read.

Big Rock Candy Mountain, by Wallace Stegner

This coming-of-age story is a spraw...